Me, attempting to type words.
I’m currently enrolled in an online “generative” writing workshop. It’s main goal is to help you overcome blocks. This first assignment was to sit down and free-associate fifty sentences about what’s blocking you. “Let the words write the words” was the instructor’s advice. Everyone else turned in finely-crafted, well-edited essays. I turned in the following mass of free-association; immediately I felt shame at somehow doing the exercise wrong.
Every critique I’ve gotten has complimented me on my “craft.” If so, this is a powerful disincentive for multiple drafts and rewrites.
50-ish (too-unedit-y) Sentences about Blockage
- I suck.
- No, I really, really suck at this.
- I will do nothing but fret over choosing the right words and stuff and forget flow.
- Flow is nothing but a psychological buzzword.
- If I surrender to the flow, I may write stuff that will upset people, esp. when it comes to memoir.
- I’m too old to say anything that anyone will want to hear.
- I rely too much on pop culture references, and no one will understand them.
- There’s too much to write about.
- No one cares.
- Stories about mental illness, esp. yours, are trite and clichéd.
- Everyone else in this class has read more books than me.
- You can’t write unless you’re an avid reader.
- You lack the attention span to read, let alone write.
- You can’t even decide on a pronoun to use for this exercise.
- I am wracked by indecision.
- Shame is holding you back.
- I am too concerned with what other people will think.
- At the same time, I am too judgy; I write to be better than others.
- I will get my comeuppance.
- I am too clever by half –look at all that unearned alliteration.
- Everyone else is deeper.
- Todd Vogel was right… I am a disruptive element… I should be quieter.
- But my desire is to respond to the situation at hand, not come into seminar (or a story) with three questions written on a notecard.
- Fuck Todd Vogel.
- How did that professor at Michigan describe your packet? Quirky. Fuck her, too… You won a Hopwood.
- Run with the quirky.
- But quirky puts people on edge.
- No one wants to read funny anecdotes about trauma… trauma needs to be deep.
- Remember, everyone else is deeper than you.
- You always will be judged by people who are deeper than you.
- You always will be judged by people who sound deeper than you. Why can’t you sound deeper?
- You have no capacity for self-observation. Your mirror is warped.
- There are always too many distractions. The cat is not your muse.
- You don’t listen to the right kind of music when you write. I mean, what is this shit Spotify playlist you’re listening to now? Canadian Gold? What even the fresh hell is that? You’re no Canadian. Stop pretending you’re Canadian. You should listen to some sort of ambient drone… that’s what serious people listen to.
- Every time you get a good flow going, you have to get up to pee. Stop drinking so much Diet Coke. Trump drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day… you’re not far behind. See, you can’t even choose writing beverages correctly.
- Why are you stuck here? Your flow sucks!
- How do you pronounce the name of that guy that wrote about flow? Csikszentmihalyi? Too bad you only studied his stuff about material culture.
- Stop going off on tangents! And you went and googled Csikszentmihalyi… that’s cheating!
- Speaking of cheating… how many shortcuts will you take in your writing? Probably too many. Remember, you’re a fraud.
- Are you even sure these “memories” actually happened? Does your fevered imagination count as “memory?”
- How much of what you remember is just fairy dust you tell yourself to make your pitiful existence sound interesting?
- Gonna try fiction? Good luck! Hasn’t everyone always told you that you’re constantly misinterpreting what other people are thinking?
- How can you properly write dialogue if you constantly think everything you see and hear is some sort of personal affront?
- What are you supposed to do… run everything you write thru some sort of cognitive behavioral therapy filter to make sure your characters’ motivations are “correct”? That’s really gonna fuck up the flow.
- No? So, you’re a mindreader now?
- Sometimes screaming is more satisfying than writing.
- No one wants to read a scream.
- Slow and low. Slow and low. Slow and low. That’s what my bowling coach says.
- Your average is up 20 pins this season. Slow and low.
- Slow. Low. Flow.
The words stung even though they weren’t directed at me. They stung even though they were only in a Facebook post about someone I did not know, existing only in ones and zeros. They stung even though the person who typed those ones and zeros has never been anything but really nice to me, and again, they were not directed at me.
Write.
The Marching Eagles practice with a monstrous, heavily-amplified metronome. It just tocks away there, forcing glockenspiels into line. I don’t mind the band itself; if the wind is right –and they’ve been practicing –I can make out what the song is. Apparently Katy Perry’s Roar has become a marching band staple. But beneath that all is the metronome drilling down. I never got to the point in my musical career where a metronome was needed, or deemed expendable enough. My theory on how they work is that they emit a noxious tock that will burrow right through the eardrum down to the spinal cord and then out to every last nerve… The only way to rid your body of this marauder is to do its bidding: You must toot, bang, or glocken that thing you’re holding. Do it now! Do it correctly, and the tock will seem like it’s not there. At least for that round.
One winter break, early 2002, I decided to spend a week in NYC. I found a cheap guesthouse on Second Avenue and 13th Street in the East Village and set out, armed with my Damron guide. I didn’t have to go far –The Phoenix was only two long blocks away. First thing I noticed was the music. I had no idea that gay folk who listened to the same type of music as me existed. To this day, I think The Phoenix had the best-curated jukebox I’ve ever encountered. 
Ornamental Illnesses 